[thelist] XML

[Ornstein, Ian]

The real deal with XML is this:Separation of content from presentation.
Having one souce of data and being able to display it in different formats
for Web Browser, Parlm Pilot, Cel Phone, WebTV and perhaps even your
refrigerator.

I look upon XSL(T) as the enabling technology that will be cusomized for
each target platform.

When a newbie looks at XML and just sees XML, s/he is seeing the tip of the
iceberg.
Today's XML discovery, from this mailing list was:http://zvon.org/

HTH
- IanO -
----- original message ---
Message: 4
From: "Michael Facius" <facius at design-newmedia.net>
To: <thelist at lists.evolt.org>
Subject: Re: [thelist] XML
Date: Sat, 10 Feb 2001 21:27:39 +0100
charset="iso-8859-1"
Reply-To: thelist at lists.evolt.org

Basically, that's correct. On the other hand, there are limitations to the
concept:
1) "You can now write a stylesheet for this document" isn't as easy as it
seems:
Not CSS is the proposed stylesheet language for XML, but XSL, which is a lot
more sophisticated and more like a "real" language.

2) At this point, you can't really let your browser parse XSL with XML. 4th
generation browsers don't support XML rendering at all, and the newer
versions only rudimentarily so (partly of course because the different XML
extensions are only working drafts at this time).

<snip>
Conclusion: Nothing is as easy as it seems (by the way, where's your
propaganda text quoted from?).
For web designers, XML is more or less a database replacement at the present
situation - and
- for most purposes - not a very good one, either, despite the w3c preaching
otherwise.
At least I'd rather search a database than 200 xml files. When XML will be
widely established,
it' won't be a problem to script database content to XML.

Anyway, Here's an introductory link to XML and related topics:
http://www.wdvl.com/Authoring/Languages/XML/

Hope this helps,
Mike